You might know that my day job, when I'm not trying to keep you entertained on here, is as a writer for TV. Mostly, I do kids TV shows and the occasional failed sitcom pilot.

Almost two years ago - given that I've experience of writing both TV comedy and writing about video games - I was approached about working on a TV show based on Fables Legends.

A lot of being a writer is getting messed around by producers and production companies. Big promises hardly ever materialise, emails go unanswered, decisions seem to be dictated by the weather. And nobody is ever entirely straight with you. It's dispiriting and tedious, but you do get used to it, and after a while start greeting most potential jobs with a shrug.

With this in mind, my brief experience with Fables: The TV Show - due to be a co-production with Steve Coogan's Baby Cow - was pretty much par for the course. Big promises, unanswered emails, and then silence. It was about a month after their last email that I read online that Microsoft was scaling back its TV plans.

Suffice to say... a Fable TV series is now even less likely to happen.

In a statement, Hanno Lenke, general manager at Microsoft Studios Europe, said this: "These have been tough decisions and we have not made them lightly, nor are they a reflection on these development teams – we are incredibly fortunate to have the talent, creativity and commitment of the people at these studios."

​You might be aware that Lionhead was founded by a certain Peter Molyneux (among others), a breakaway from Molyneux's own Bullfrog. It was bought by Microsoft in 2006, and since then it has focused almost exclusively on the Fable franchise, barring a few cancelled experimental titles.

Molyneux left the company in 2012 so he could spend more time upsetting people, but the controversial figure's shadow continued to loom large over Lionhead. It looms even now over the studio's closure. Inevitably, many are speculating that the seeds of the company's demise began with the over-promising Molyneux, while others on Twitter seem to be labouring under the misbelief that he was still there at the end, and can now "take his lies elsewhere".

​What exactly happened? Fable Legends was intended to be a major release for the Xbox One - a free-to-play multiplayer RPG. Players were already adventuring in the world of Albion via a closed beta (with an open beta due to go live this spring). There were previews as far back as three years ago, which talked in positive terms of the lush world, and promising gameplay. Indeed, I was privy to a ton of very impressive material when I was oh-so-briefly involved. It was a long, long way into its development.

So... seriously... what happened? Why would Microsoft suddenly cancel a game that had been in development for something like four years, and appeared to be close to completion? Why would they flush all that money and work down the obscuri-hole?

A MASSIVE FAN OF FABLE?Admittedly, I was never a massive fan of the Fable series - it all just felt a bit Discworld-y and sixth form comedy troupe to me - but what I knew of Fable Legends had me interested.

In a market that is becoming ever more homogenised, the sense I was getting is that Fables Legends was idiosyncratic, deliberately tongue-in-cheek (the macguffin players were to quest for was called "The Moon On a Stick"). The literature I read described it as "Pythonesque" (which could've gone either way, admittedly).

What's more, Microsoft seemed to have faith in it, and was planning to go big. Indeed, if they were planning an Xbox Live TV show based around it, that seems to indicate it was being set-up as some sort of tentpole game. It's hardly something that would suddenly implode after four years of development.

Aside from this being crushing news for everyone at Lionhead, it's also terrible news for the British development community. With RPGs taking themselves more seriously than ever, stripping the corpse of Tolkien like there's no tomorrow - and then filtering that material through a trans-Atlantic translation matrix - something different, something defiantly British, would've been very welcome. It's also a major PR stink-up for Microsoft.

By all accounts, nobody at Lionhead appeared to be braced for this abrupt turn of events, so there are likely to be some angry and upset people out there. With that in mind, there's no doubt that the truth will start to emerge in the days and weeks to come.

I was really looking forwards to this. I loved all the Fable games (apart from the last one that relied on Kinect - didn't even play that one) so I am gutted that it has been cancelled. How can you just cancel something that is more or less finished? Or was that the problem, that is was, after four years, nowhere near to being finished?

Ever since that E3 when they announced "Fable: The Journey" and the entire audience went stone dead, I knew that no body gave a shit about the Fable franchise.

It was just one of a long line of Molyneux's spiel where he promised us the earth, but gave us mud instead. It was just misguided Microsoft constantly ramming it down our throats YOU WILL LIKE A SEQUEL that gave any more titles.

If they listened to fans, they'd have released a new Conker or Perfect Dark, Hell, even a sequel to Voodoo Vince would have been more accepted. but they wanted more Fable when no body wanted it. The fact the anniversary editions falling into bargain bins after two weeks on sale should have been signs for them.

All I can say is RIP Fable, but don't expect anyone to attend your funeral.

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Superbeast 37

7/3/2016 07:41:59 pm

So did anyone here play in the closed beta? I didn't get an invite and when I looked on Youtube there didn't seem to be many user generated videos from the beta. No idea if that was due to some agreement that participants had to sign or because literally no one else was in it either!

What I did see of it didn't exactly blow me away either. I play a lot of RPG's and MMORPG's and I didn't think "wow that really demands 100 hours of my life instead of these other titles over here".

Fables nest was indeed stunk up a long time ago and I don't think there is any coming back from that. Although I have to say that this had no bearing on my lukewarm feelings for it.

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Toaster

7/3/2016 08:33:20 pm

Molyneux has had nothing to do with a great game since Dungeon Keeper, 19 years ago. Why does anyone care what he thinks now, after so many failures?

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Col. Asdasd

7/3/2016 08:45:32 pm

Poe's Law is a helluva drug.

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Toaster

10/3/2016 01:08:17 pm

No sarcasm intended Colonel. Look at the list of projects since DK and tell me which were great.

Black and White, Fable, Fable 2, all good games. All made less than 19 years ago. Even The Movies wasn't terrible. Sad fact is Lionhead's cancelled games list is almost as long as their released games list.

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Azure

7/3/2016 08:40:49 pm

I liked the Fable main series, they were especially fun to mess about in or when they got weird( conga line people into the dark temple, the D&D mission in Fable 3, the demon door where all the demon doors from the previous games retired) but most of the spin offs didn't give me a chance to do that.

I never got into the beta and I would liked to have had a go even it's not my sort of game. Oh well Fable was always a weird one for Micrsoft to be in charge of.

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Meter Polyneux

12/3/2016 08:19:14 am

Me too. Even 3 has its charms, although I smacked the joypad down in a huff when I first played it because of the changes, I passively played it through the eyes of the eldest and her mum a few years later, and that showed me that the dumbing down, whilst rage enduring for me, really did help new gamers get into it. Such a shame MS wanted to spin it out into so many things it wasn't, including Fable Legends. If they do continue the franchise I'd hope they get back to the core of a very British fantasy role player that let's you blow raspberries at folk.

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Priscella Queen of the Hull suburbs

12/3/2016 01:06:42 pm

MS threw a LOT of money at this. Sometime at the beginning of 2015 there was a head hunt for contractor programmers who can program in Unreal Engine 4 for the average of £250 a day, which is quite a bit for games. Add to that the whole "Unified Windows platform" that Phil Spencer was bleeting about and I'm wondering what is going on with MS'es gaming division